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Does imitation facilitate the acquisition of grammar? Evidence from a study of autistic, Down's syndrome and normal children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Helen Tager-Flusberg  and
Susan Calkins
Helen Tager-Flusberg*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
Susan Calkins
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
*
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA.
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Abstract

This paper re-opens the question of whether imitation plays a significant role in the acquisition of grammar. Data for this study came from four samples of naturalistic mother-child speech taken over the course of one year from four autistic, four Down's syndrome and four normal children, covering a range of MLU stages. In general, autistic children used more formulaic language, including imitations, than Down's syndrome children, who in turn used more than the normal children. Comparisons of imitative and spontaneous corpora from the same transcripts were made using MLU and the Index of Productive Syntax. The main findings were that, with few exceptions, spontaneous speech utterances were longer, and contained more advanced grammatical constructions than did the imitation utterances. These findings held across all three groups of subjects. We conclude that imitation does not facilitate grammatical development.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , October 1990 , pp. 591 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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Footnotes

*

This research was generously supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (RO1 HD 18833). Portions of this study were presented at the 1986 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. We thank Gail Andrick, Ann Chadwick-Dias, and Karen Price for their help in preparing the transcripts. We also wish to extend our sincere appreciation to the children and their families who participated in this study.

References

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